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PowerVR KMS/GBM Driver Is Hoped For Release Soon

09-04-2012, 01:00 PM

Phoronix: PowerVR KMS/GBM Driver Is Hoped For Release Soon

There should be a PowerVR driver update soon-to-be-released that can handle kernel mode-setting (KMS) along with Mesa's Graphics Buffer Manager (GBM). With this support will also come the ability to run Wayland...

PowerVR? ImgTec? lawl. A driver for it? For which of the many chips? With any features beyond pure modesetting? I doubt this very much.
Not that I wouldn't welcome anything in that way, but it seems not very realistic to me looking back at the many years these chips are around, even in popular Beagleboards and others.

Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

Comment

It's in loads of stuff (something like 350 million shipments for all PVR cores, including MBX and SGX), and doesn't handle modesetting. The SGX only does 3D rendering, it's the SoC-specific display controller which does modesetting. So the 'PowerVR driver' that Intel released ages ago was just a really basic modesetting driver for their Menlow platform and doesn't actually ever touch the PVR in any way: it's a complete misnomer. On the OMAP, it's the OMAP display controller which does modesetting.

The driver he's talking about is indeed for 3D, but it won't be an open source release. I'm pretty sure the article explicitly says it's not open source. But it is hugely useful for running Wayland on OMAP4, as Rob demoed at the GStreamer conference.

Comment

It's in loads of stuff (something like 350 million shipments for all PVR cores, including MBX and SGX), and doesn't handle modesetting. The SGX only does 3D rendering, it's the SoC-specific display controller which does modesetting. So the 'PowerVR driver' that Intel released ages ago was just a really basic modesetting driver for their Menlow platform and doesn't actually ever touch the PVR in any way: it's a complete misnomer. On the OMAP, it's the OMAP display controller which does modesetting.

The driver he's talking about is indeed for 3D, but it won't be an open source release. I'm pretty sure the article explicitly says it's not open source. But it is hugely useful for running Wayland on OMAP4, as Rob demoed at the GStreamer conference.

Ah, that takes care of the confusion this article generated in my mind since my netbook with SGX (menlow) has had KMS for over a year now.

Comment

It's in loads of stuff (something like 350 million shipments for all PVR cores, including MBX and SGX), and doesn't handle modesetting. The SGX only does 3D rendering, it's the SoC-specific display controller which does modesetting. So the 'PowerVR driver' that Intel released ages ago was just a really basic modesetting driver for their Menlow platform and doesn't actually ever touch the PVR in any way: it's a complete misnomer. On the OMAP, it's the OMAP display controller which does modesetting.

The driver he's talking about is indeed for 3D, but it won't be an open source release. I'm pretty sure the article explicitly says it's not open source. But it is hugely useful for running Wayland on OMAP4, as Rob demoed at the GStreamer conference.

Providing 3d support .. does this mean that the OpenGLES stack and libdrm will be provided or does this mean that the kernel OMAP DRM driver will be enhanced? or both? This is more of a general question regarding DRM. What are the pieces requited in order to support 3d acceleration with DRM?